Arraignment postponed for mom charged in children’s murder

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(CNN) — Marilyn Edge was supposed to turn over her son and daughter to her ex-husband in Georgia.

Instead, police allege, she fled with the children to Southern California and killed them.

On Saturday night, the bodies of the children — Jaelen, 13, and Faith, 10 — were found in a hotel in Santa Ana, California.

Edge, 42, was apprehended Saturday night after apparently trying to commit suicide by crashing her car at a Home Depot parking lot in a nearby town, police said.

Authorities in Orange County have charged Edge with the children’s murder. She was scheduled to appear in court Tuesday in Santa Ana to enter a plea to the charges but her arraignment was delayed — with her attorney agreeing to the delay — until October 25.

Her ex-husband, Mark Edge, is hospitalized at the VA hospital in Decatur, Georgia, his attorney Marian Weeks said.

The former couple had been fighting a years-long custody battle over the children.

Weeks told CNN affiliate WSB that Marilyn Edge had abruptly left court last week after a judge’s custody ruling did not go in her favor.

Under the order, she was meant to hand the two children over to her ex-husband at Cobb County Police Headquarters in Georgia.

“When Judge Leonard was giving his order on Wednesday afternoon, she got up and left the courtroom in the middle of it, so that was the ultimate message to Judge Leonard: ‘I’m not going to listen to what you have to say.'” said Weeks.

Weeks said she expressed suspicions to her client that Marilyn Edge might flee.

“I’d even said to him I thought she’d take the kids to California because she’d lived in California in the past,” she said. “But neither of us thought she’d kill the children.”

Marilyn Edge, from Scottsdale, Arizona, has been charged with two felony counts of special circumstance murder in the deaths of the two children, the Orange County District Attorney said.

If convicted, she faces a minimum sentence of life in state prison without the possibility of parole. The special circumstances cited by prosecutors include committing multiple murders and murder by poisoning.